


Enough to Go On

by Mireille



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 14:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18166421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: There's only one good thing Thor has, these days. Except that it turns out he may not really have that, either.





	Enough to Go On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soft_princess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_princess/gifts).



****

Thor is the king of nothing.

Asgard may be a people, not a place, but scarcely twenty souls have made their way to Earth in the past few months: the lucky, or perhaps unlucky, few who, like Thor, had somehow survived Thanos' attack on the _Statesman_. 

Now that the Titan's handiwork has been undone, there may be twice that many in time. Perhaps even as many as a hundred, if they are able to locate those Asgardians who had been on other worlds when Hela escaped her prison. Without the Gatekeeper and his all-seeing eyes, though, that will be a difficult undertaking, if not an impossible one. 

Thor has lost more than Heimdall's sight; with his death, he has lost his most trusted adviser. He has spent his entire life preparing to be king, but nothing has prepared him for this, and he has no one to lean on. 

Asgard is now only a handful of people. His dearest friends are dead--at least, Hogun, Volstagg, and Fandral certainly are, and no one knows where Sif has gone. His father is dead. 

Loki is dead, and despite what Thor tries to tell himself, he knows deep in his heart that this time, it isn't a trick. 

Midgard, like the rest of the universe, had been in chaos when the first small group of survivors had made their way there. But perhaps that had worked in their favor: a grieving world could make room for a small band of ragged refugees, their losses uniting them. 

Thor had planned, when it seemed they had a future, to petition for shelter in Norway, in the lands whose old stories were full of the names of Thor's people. Instead, an offer came from Canada, not really that far north from where the Avengers have their headquarters, and Thor accepted. 

It really didn't matter now. Before, he'd envisioned creating a new Asgard, an enclave where his people could thrive, living mostly apart from the Midgardians. 

Now that goal is far out of his reach. They will need to trade with Midgard, to work with them. To have children with them, even; they know it's possible--there are Midgardians with Asgardian blood in them, from fifty generations back--but in the past, it has never been encouraged. It will have to be encouraged now, though, if anything of Asgard is to survive. It will change them, but to refuse change is to die, in this new universe. 

Thor is weary of change, or perhaps just weary. Exhausted, down to his bones, more like. He isn't sure he can carry this burden. He no longer even has Mjolnir to proclaim him worthy. Stormbreaker is an incredible weapon, but it isn't the same. 

But he has one thing left to him, one thing that hasn't become grim duty, one private joy. 

He doesn't remember having much of an opinion of Bruce Banner, before they met again on Sakaar; the Hulk, yes, but Banner had been more background than anything else. But their shared experiences, their shared losses, had forged a friendship that Thor has found himself relying on, these past months, as they fight and plan and try to discover a way to undo what Thanos has done to the universe, even though Thor knows that so many of his own losses can never be undone. 

He doesn't know when that friendship had undergone a change in his heart, whether it was before Thanos had destroyed the _Statesman_ or afterward, but he does know that it changed, that now Bruce holds a place in his affections that few have had before. He isn't entirely certain that even Jane, as much as he loved--still loves--her, had ingrained herself do deeply into his heart. 

Thor may not be a deep thinker, but he's also not a fool, and he's learned that even an Asgardian with what should be millennia left to him might not live to see tomorrow. So one night, when he'd gone to Bruce's laboratory to remind him that he could not save the universe by killing himself from exhaustion, he had tried to be honest with Bruce about what was in his heart.

It hadn't gone the way he'd hoped. 

"Don't, Thor," Bruce had said, sharply. "Please, just stop, before you embarrass both of us." 

Thor had sighed. "Then there's no hope that in time, you might--" 

" _No_ ," Bruce had said, and then taken several deep breaths, letting each one out slowly. "I'm sorry, but no." 

He'd wanted to be angry, but in truth, Thor couldn't blame him. 

Thor knows that even now, with his scars and his false eye, he's handsome enough. He's a strong warrior, a brave fighter, a loyal friend, his people's king. But Bruce is a scholar, a scientist; Bruce is as gentle as his alter ego is violent. He's not a silly boy, to have his head turned by looks alone, or by strength, or power. 

He'd hoped that mourning Thor's people together, working together to help save those few who could be brought back and to avenge the rest, would mean something. He'd hoped that, as it had for him, camaraderie would have deepened into a stronger feeling. That the shared experiences which turned them from allies to friends might also have let that friendship grow into love.

But he couldn't blame Bruce if that hadn't happened. 

For him, it had. But who could blame Bruce for not wanting more from Thor? All Thor can offer Bruce is himself, and that is clearly not enough. 

Thor still has pride; he doesn't beg, or plead, or demand. He stops visiting Bruce in the lab uninvited; he lets Bruce decide how their friendship is to continue, if it is to continue. He doesn't try to change Bruce's mind. 

But pride is a lonely thing, so when he can, when he is needed there or _not_ needed by his people, he still visits the compound, just in case Bruce changes it on his own. 

And one day--one night, actually, when most of the team assembled to work on the possibilities of the quantum realm have given in to their exhaustion--Bruce stumbles into the kitchen when Thor is there. 

Bruce makes himself a sandwich and drops wearily into the chair across from Thor. Thor nods a greeting, but doesn't speak; he's still not sure if Bruce wants to hear from him. Bruce has insisted that of course he still values Thor's friendship, but that friendship has been damaged by Thor's declaration, no matter how much they both try to deny it. 

It's so hard not to say something. If Bruce were Asgardian, Thor might feel better about waiting, about giving him the space he needs, but Bruce is a mortal, and not a young one. They have so little time, even without war or accident, and it's being wasted. 

But that's Bruce's choice, and Thor will let him make it. 

But after a few minutes in which Bruce devours his sandwich--Thor knows Bruce's habits when confronted with a problem, and remembering to eat and sleep are not among them, so he doesn't want to disturb Bruce's meal--it's Bruce who breaks the silence. 

"I'm human," Bruce says, slowly. "And the big guy might be able to stop me from putting a bullet through my head, but there's not much he can do about old age. I'm pretty healthy. I might have forty years left. But I'm going to be spending most of that as an old man--and forty years is _nothing_ to you." 

Thor nods. "I'm aware of that." He'd had to consider that with Jane, as well. He already knew that he'd rather have a blazing, glorious moment of loving and being loved, followed by centuries of mourning, than settle for anything less. He's never known how to do anything without throwing all he has into it.

"You can't be, or you wouldn't have said what you did."

"You'll grow old," Thor confirms, "and you'll die, and I'll still be a young man. I know that. I have _considered_ that. But what if I had fallen in love with one of my own people, and they had died when Asgard fell? When Thanos came to our ship? They would still be dead, and I would still mourn them." 

"Yeah, but probability--"

Thor sighs. "It would hurt me no more and no less if you died tomorrow in battle than if you died in forty years of old age. Or if you died four hundred years from now, or four thousand."

Bruce shakes his head. "I can't be someone else you lose," he says, quietly--and as despairing as the words sound, they give Thor hope. 

Bruce isn't indifferent to him, after all. He's trying to _protect_ him, and Thor, for the first time in months, wants to laugh--not in mockery, but in sheer relief. 

He has to choose his words carefully, something that has never been among his talents. 

"Do you believe," he says, finally, opting for simple honesty, "that keeping me at arm's length will mean that I _won't_ mourn you? That you _won't_ be 'someone else I lose'?" 

"It should," Bruce argues, sounding weary. "You should forget me. Just--give up." 

Now Thor does give in to the urge to laugh. "Is that something you've ever known me to do?" He thinks of Loki, how he refused to give up hope that his brother would return to his side, would once again become the prince of Asgard he was meant to be, and how at the end, finally, his faith had been rewarded. Loki had died as a son of Odin, as Thor's brother, as one of the defenders of Asgard. 

Before tonight, he'd been doing his best to accept Bruce's rejection of him, but he isn't going to claim that he'll give up on his own feelings. That isn't a thing that Thor knows how to do, to be honest, and it's certainly not a skill he has any interest in learning. 

"No," Bruce confesses, at least. "No, not you. You're too damn stubborn."

"And if you can't protect me," Thor says, "why should we both suffer?" 

A long silence, and then Bruce says, "Okay. I give up. You're right, and I--" 

Thor is on his feet and around the table to Bruce's side in a moment; Bruce loses the thread of what he's going to say when Thor clasps him tight. He clutches at Thor, gripping him with a surprising strength.

And then Thor pulls Bruce closer to him, so that he's leaning against Thor, because exhaustion is leaving Bruce unsteady on his feet. Thor can do this for him, keep him supported, even if he can't play a more central role in this part of their attempt to set the universe to rights. 

Bruce kisses him, and Thor isn't sure if the tears he tastes are his own or Bruce's, or perhaps both of theirs, because they are finally not _quite_ alone. 

"You need sleep," Thor says at last. 

"Put me to bed?" Bruce responds, and it's obvious that it was meant to be flirtatious, but he's so worn down that Thor can only answer by picking him up and striding toward the sleeping quarters. 

They'll have time for everything else later. Or, Thor realizes, perhaps they won't; the universe is an uncertain place. But they have this, at least. 

And for the first time in a very long time, Thor doesn't believe that he has nothing. He has hope, and that's enough for him to go on with.

****

**Author's Note:**

> So, like the last ficlet I posted, this actually started life as just me fleshing out a background ship in an RP that soft_princess and I were doing, and then I decided this didn't require six months' worth of context to share with a wider audience, just some additional details. (This was originally part of the same universe as the last ficlet I posted, tbh, but they were virtually standalone initially and are _completely_ independent of one another now.) 
> 
> Hopefully, this worked out okay.
> 
> You can find me [on Dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/) if you want to reach me!


End file.
